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Delta Cost Project

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Delta Cost Project at American Institutes for Research (AIR) makes a unique contribution to the dialogue by focusing on how colleges spend their money. We believe college spending can be contained without sacrificing access or education quality.

The Delta Cost Project provides policymakers, higher education administrators, and the general public with analyses and resources to deepen understanding of what colleges do with their money. Our team focuses on four key questions:

Where does the money come from?

Where does the money go?

What are tuitions paying for?

What is the relationship between spending and outcomes?

The answers to these questions provide insight into the challenges and opportunities we face as we strive to improve higher education affordability and accessibility in the United States.

In January 2012, AIR took over the analytic work of the Delta Cost Project. The National Center for Education Statistics is maintaining the Delta Cost Project’s database as part of its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). IPEDS conducts annual surveys gathering information from every college, university, and technical and vocational institution that participates in the federal student financial aid programs.

Related Resources

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Policymakers, students, parents, and the media are taking a hard look at the value of higher education. Which college to choose? Associate's or Bachelor's degree? What major? The research featured here offers insight on how those choices affect students' success and future earnings.

Colleges and universities are relying heavily on contingent faculty to increase flexibility and reduce costs. These resources explore this trend to determine where contingent faculty are most often hired and savings actually result in lower overall costs.

On January 8, 2015, President Obama initiated a nationwide conversation about community colleges and the education of the “middle class” by proposing a tuition-free community college plan. Although it has received far less attention, the President’s plan also called for effective support services that can help students stay in college long enough to advance their career goals by completing degrees or certificates and/or transferring to four-year institutions. Rather than free tuition, which already exists for most students who need it, this study maintains instead that proven student support services are what need to be funded.

College students now expect tuition bills 4 to 6 percent higher than they paid the year before. That often means students in four-year public universities pay several hundred dollars more annually while students at private universities shell out upwards of a thousand dollars more each year. What is all this extra money buying?

This Trends in College Spending update presents national-level estimates for the Delta Cost Project data metrics during the period 2001–11. The updated analysis finds that subsidies for public higher education institutions have hit a 10-year low, while students for the first time pay on average half or more of their education’s cost. Additionally, community colleges are posting the lowest level of spending per student in a decade.

The growing furor over the cost of college has spawned various explanations of why tuitions have escalated much faster than inflation and family income. Often, “administrative bloat” is blamed. It is easy to find examples of college presidents with exceptionally high salaries and other senior staff who don’t teach, and it is true that the numbers of non-teaching staff at our colleges and universities have risen markedly. But is it also true that our colleges are being overrun with administrators? Not necessarily.

Skyrocketing college tuitions and trillion-dollar student loan debt have put college and university spending in the spotlight. "Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive? Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education," a report by the Delta Cost Project at AIR, finds that colleges and universities increasingly rely on part-time faculty to meet instructional demands and rein in costs, but rising benefit costs and increased hiring for other types of positions have undercut those savings.

This brief highlights recent trends in athletic and academic spending at public Division I colleges and universities, which show that athletic departments spend far more per athlete than institutions spend to educate the average student—typically three to six times as much.

Rita Kirshstein, director of the Delta Cost Project, discusses college tuition hikes and affordability concerns over the past several decades. Kirshstein explains that today’s affordability crisis affects many more students and families than earlier ones.